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Your advice as an experienced affiliate is desperately needed by a merchant who recently joined ShareASale exclusively but already ran a successful in-house affiliate program.

As the CEO of OARRealEstate.com, your advice can help with shaping our affiliate program to appeal to affiliates who fit well with this program.

Currently about a hundred affiliates participate the in-house system (now exclusive to ShareASale) and 8 of those affiliates generate the entire company revenue. While that's exciting, there's a catch.

Here's the downside. None of them truly operate as affiliates. Those individuals and companies spend full time promoting their own real estate related products.

After reading through this forum, the spirit and energy you top affiliates bring to marketing, well, it's thrilling.

So let's cut to the chase. The numbers show that every lead generated on the website creates an average of $31.23 of gross revenue. That remains consitent on a monthly and yearly basis.

After subtracting fixed costs, variable expenses, and profit margin, affiliates can earn 33% of that in whatever manner you recommend. The default now in ShareASales is $10 per lead with pocket change of $10 per sale.

$Zero per lead and 30% of each sale also works--or anything in between. What's your advice on what to offer in ShareASale by default?

In addition the budget includes 10% of gross towards 2nd tier payout, commissions to ShareASale and/or bonuses and rewards to affiliates.

And then 10% of gross goes for managing the affiliate program internally. That includes paying the Affiliate Manager and Marketing Director, Tracey Fieber, as well as any future staff to support affiliates.

Do you foresee any problems in that financial plan? The other half of gross covers overhead, variable expenses, a modest profit margin, and taxes, of course.

Folks, with all the sweat and tears spent in achieving 30% opt-in conversion rates, and 8.5% sales conversion rate, it seems the best and brightest affiliates should love to join if you can give great advice to connect with them..

So, specifically, how can the best, top affiliates that truly "fit" the program get attracted to promote it?

Maybe you can give better advice if you know more about the demographics of the ideal customers and prospects.

Unlike many real estate strategies that appeal to dreamers in the 24 to 35 age group with pie-in-sky promises, the applications to OARrealestate.com show that 60% ALREADY invest in real estate and want to improve their strategy.

Another 30% actively work as real estate and legal professionals. Real estate agents and brokers, mortgage loan officers, and even real estate attorneys apply for the tools and paperwork. The demographics tend to be male and females from 35 to 50.

In other words, this is a system for smart, mature, affluent people who want the square truth about the risks and how it works.

NOTE: It appeals to smart people because they learn up front before ever applying or spending any money exactly who it can work for and graphs of their local real estate market showing whether the strategy works there or not--updated quarterly.

Please brainstorm on how to connect with the best affiliates in ShareASale with visitors or subscribers that fit this demographic.

Any and all suggestions about the setup on ShareASAle or anything else that might improve the affiliate program will be deeply appreciated.

My sites are mostly gift related and I look forward to holidays which pretty much guarantees $$$$ for me. I don't have the knowledge to push something like real estate and that could be the case with a lot of affiliates here.

Have you tried to visit real estate message boards or maybe they have chat rooms or maybe visit websites that you think would benefit your service and contact the owner to become one of your affiliates?

Thanks for your encouragement. People sign up every day through the new merchant section. I love ShareASale specifically because the affiliate interface allows affiliates to check the EPC of merchants.

It's unclear yet whether these affiliates really fit with this program. So far a number of affiliates with "online shopping malls" signed up. How effective can they be? How can they be evaluated for approval or not?

Also, a few "web consulting companies" signed up. It remains to be seen whether thay really can promote as affiliates or perhaps just contact merchants for the purpose of selling SEO and web design services.

Thanks for the tip on the main affiliate section in ABW. I'll post something there to get any advice available.